> I wonder if tests have been done with the rate that "trained"
> people can get scribbling Graffiti on their Palms? (hehe :-)
I'm using Fitaly on my Palm, and I'm ready to challenge everyone
here trying to enter more characters per minute via HWR on
his Newton. Especially when entering text into the same note
fast for an hour, in which the Newton will get slower and
slower where the Palm wouldn't.
Fitaly is an application that's also available for the Newton,
but unfortunately only in an older version. For the Palm it
comes in two
versions, one that works with a sticker on which a keyboard
is printed which you stick on the area below the
Palm's screen (where Graffiti lives), one with an on screen
keyboard. I have registered both an hour after I loaded the
demo versions.
This thing is full of brilliant ideas (I'm sure I'll forget half):
1) The keyboard is re-layouted to minimize pen movement.
Most frequently used characters are grouped together in the
middle, least frequently used on the outside edges and corners.
2) There are two space keys in the middle,
again minimizing pen travel.
3) Sliding (drawing a tiny line starting on the key outwards).
Sliding is just as fast as tapping in real life.
This is about the best invention since the wheel I
think. As an example for the letter "a":
Tapping prints "a".
Sliding right prints "A". No need for a shift key anymore,
one tap less for every word starting with a capital letter.
Caps key redundant, too, you can just concentrate on what you
write, not how you write it.
Sliding up prints the german umlaut ("a" with two dots on top).
Since some time they introduced custom sliding. Custom sliding
lets you, for every key, specify 8 directions (top-left, top,
top-right, right, ...) and what will be printed. Thus
sliding our letter "a" left on my palm prints @, a letter I regularely
have problems to find on onscreen and other keyboards.
Sliding the letter e left prints my email address.
Sliding either of the two space keys is <Backspace>, something
many do frequently need that on normal keyboards is about
as far away from the most frequently used keys as you can get.
4) The onscreen version realizes that it should place itself elswhere
if required, you always can see where you write without
having to move it around all the time.
5) About two dozens of other good ideas.
There's demo versions for the Newton and of course the
Palm, check them out at www.fitaly.com. If you check the Newton version,
be aware that it doesn't even come close to the Palm feeling both
in terms of functionality and of speed. But it is enough to get the idea.
Frank
Newton hardware and software at http://www.pda-soft.de
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